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This paper seeks to deal with the “image problem” in the library and information science (LIS) profession from the cultural studies viewpoint. It aims to explore representations of LIS in LIS itself and to research the representation practices of LIS in the social and cultural environment.

After identifying some main features of professional discourse on the LIS image, the empirical part of the research particularly explored two questions: how LIS is constituted and how it is embedded in broader social practices. More than 300 articles were collected from the Slovenian daily newspaper with the largest circulation. The sample was analyzed quantitatively and two‐fold qualitatively.

The results of quantitative analysis outline the formation of LIS's community nature. The results of qualitative analysis mostly show the signifying practices in differentiating between the “old” and the “modern” and representing practices in creating “zealous” librarians and “suspicious” users. The results also point to librarians as “organic intellectuals”.

The study is exploratory and at this point the thesis on “organic intellectuals” cannot be confirmed; in addition to the limits in the analysis methods, the theoretical background needs to be further explored. The findings cannot be generalized due to social and cultural differences.

The methodology can be applied to other research subjects. The results may be helpful for library managers and library public relations work.

There are only a few studies of such theoretical and methodological design that have researched the role of the LIS in society. The paper also analyzes the “image problem” in the daily newspapers.

To develop a new conceptualisation of the public particular emphasis is placed on later developments in the work of Niklas Luhmann using theoretical terms such as medium, form and observation.

Current theoretical approaches conceptualise the public domain as a sphere, field or system, and theorists disagree about the range of meanings of the term public. While acknowledging that diversity of meanings, this paper seeks to avoid the limitations imposed by figures such as sphere, field or system by invoking the sociological theory developed by Niklas Luhmann.

Building on Luhmann’s work, the public is conceived here as (connection) medium and projection.

The paper draws on a range of diverse phenomena to illustrate the wider scope of this conception and its potential application, including public interactions, the transformation of texts as publications, audience formation, the role of media communication and the concept of traffic. In so doing, the paper contributes to the development of system theory as well as to a wide-ranging theory of the public.

The purpose of this study is to rethink the issue of publicity from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective.

Assuming that there is a dominant paradigm in the studies of the public sphere centered on Habermas’ ideas, media theory (and especially Luhmann who is considered as a media theorist) is selected as a new context that provides different concepts, ideas, language games and metaphors that allow the re-foundation of the study of publicity.

Publicity as a social structure emerges – and acquires different forms during history – out of the complex dynamics resulting from the interaction between success media, such as power, and different kinds of dissemination media.

A research into the forms of publicity not only promotes awareness of the ubiquity of the phenomenon across cultural evolution, but also offers tools to make new discoveries and systematize what is already known about the subject and its ramifications.

In the last 15 years, Nigeria has developed a feature film industry based on video and video compact disc distribution which currently produces over 600 films a year making Nigeria (in terms of numbers) one of the largest film producing nations in the world. English language films (Nollywood) have become a dominant media form all over the African continent. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implications of this phenomenon for marketing video film in Africa, and examine the structure of the industry.

Using the case study method, the paper examines how a technological innovation such as video home system (VHS) is being used in ways never imagined or intended by the innovators. Consequently, the emergence and proliferation of inexpensive VHS video tape recorders have led to the growth of video‐based movie production in several African countries, especially Nigeria.

It is hoped that findings of this case study will provide the basis for future scholarly analysis of the economy of the Nollywood industry, and also provide a template for practitioners to engage in future research in video film in Africa.

There have been no studies of Nollywood published to date.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature by exploring how curvilinear manifestations of user engagement can be explained in the setting of fashion-oriented social media.

This study analyses how ten Swedish fashion brands have been integrated in expressions of user engagement in social media. In total, a material of 11,173 user-generated contents from different types of social media applications over a period of 12 weeks was collected and analysed.

The results of this paper show that user engagement fluctuates considerably over time in social media. It also shows that the degree of engagement varies between different forms of social media applications.

This study contributes to the literature on fashion marketing and user engagement by adding empirical support for the suggestion that expressions of engagement found in social media are curvilinear in their nature. It also concludes that highly involved and engaged users, instead of being brand activists, tend to be variety seekers in the studied setting that when taken together represents an emerging managerial challenge for the fashion industry and particularly fashion firms.

This paper aims to understand the discrepancy between Germany’s immediate positive response to the so-called “Europe 2015's refugee crisis“ and the strict asylum legislation adopted in Germany in the following year.

The discrepancy is attributed to external and internal forces. The external force is Germany’s obligation to adhere to the Common European Asylum System. The internal force is the role of the different policy actors. The paper focuses on the role of the media as an example of a private policy actor. Through adopting the theory of the social construction of target populations, the paper studies how the media constructs “asylum seekers”, the target of the new asylum legislation. The role of the media is analyzed using the methodology of qualitative content analysis of a selected number of newspaper articles.

The majority of the studied articles problematized receiving and hosting refugees and focused on the reason behind migration differentiating between asylum seekers fleeing conflict areas and all others who might be abusing the asylum channel. The findings of the content analysis, as such, resonate with the amendments that focused on facilitating the integration of accepted “refugees” but restricted further entry. As such, it could be argued that these findings explain the influence of the media on the amendments and as such provide an explanation to the discrepancy between the initial response and the amendments.

The analysis focused on one newspaper. The findings, as such, are not representative. The aim is only to provide an example of how the German media dealt with the refugee crisis and to suggest using the theory chosen by the paper to analyze the link between asylum legislation and the construction of asylum seekers. To understand how asylum legislation is influenced by how asylum seekers are constructed, more studies are needed. Such studies could analyze the role played by other media outputs and/or the role played by other policy actors in constructing the target of the policy.

The media’s response is based on analyzing a sample of newspaper articles published by a German newspaper following the so-called 2015 refugee crisis. Accordingly, the findings represent an original endeavor to understand how the media reacted to the crisis.

To examine how social media restrict and recreate messages within current interactionist scripts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this study applies a framework of digital reflexivity highlighting stages of information flow. It applies the symbolic interaction concept of emotional events to analyze the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the role of social media in disseminating Bouazizi’s act as one catalyst of the MENA citizen uprisings. The role of social media in the “Arab Spring” merits investigation because social media provide opportunities to examine shifting identities, interactions, and actions of citizen activists in the MENA uprisings. This study is important and timely because little symbolic interactionist scholarship exists on MENA identities and social movements, or on crowd interaction and activism outside the West. The nuanced nature of MENA political activism and complex processes of the development of activists’ “mutable” selves (Zurcher, 1977) are fluid and resistant to symbolically defined social roles, interactionist scripts and reflexivity, and public communication practices in a MENA under political and social transition.

Academics and the business community are interested in learning how social media can benefit (or harm) consumer‐brand engagement. As more branding activity goes social, marketers are not always welcome in all social media spaces. In this invited commentary, the authors aim to lay out the challenges that social media faces for enhancing consumer‐brand engagement. In doing so, they seek to turn social media challenges into future research directions.

The paper reviews prior literature on social media and brand engagement.

The majority of social media marketing initiatives take the form of communicating sales promotions to already engaged consumers.

Marketers need to find ways to use social media to create lasting brand engagement rather than to merely utilize this communication technology to enhance short‐term revenue.

This critical review provides marketing academics and practitioners avenues for future research and applied considerations. It is an adaptation and extension of Schultz's 2013 paper.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why young people use and participate in social networking sites (SNSs) with specific reference to Bebo.

A qualitative approach is employed in this paper with a view to exploring the uses and gratifications (U and G) that girls aged 12‐14 years, both seek and obtain from the Bebo SNS. The research is conducted in a school setting in Ireland.

The findings indicate that the participants are actively using Bebo for their own personal motives and gratifications in terms of presenting and managing a certain identity and persona in a social context. Furthermore, the relatively impersonal nature of the online environment is seen to especially facilitate the young participants in negotiating the practicalities and difficulties that can arise offline, in terms of forging identities and managing relationships.

U and G theory has attracted criticism in terms of a perceived limitation that it only serves to offer lists of reasons as to why audiences attend to the media, and furthermore, a perception that much of the extant U and G research has desisted from discerning between gratifications sought (GS) and gratifications obtained (GO). This paper affirms the appropriateness of the U and G theoretical approach in the context of online research. The authors conclude that SNS such as Bebo facilitate the participants in this paper in executing personal aims (for example, identity creation and management) with a view to obtaining certain gratifications (for example, peer acceptance). Therefore, a clear distinction but inextricable link is demonstrated between the GS and GO from participating in SNS.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the underlying motives for individuals’ polychronicity, the preference to multitask with media.

For this exploratory study, a qualitative research design is chosen, using face-to-face in-depth interviews and triad groups. In total, 34 in-depth interviews are conducted in the UK, Germany and Australia, with four subsequent triads in the UK.

The underlying motives for individuals’ preference for multiple media use include eight dimensions: comfort with multitasking; multi-channel preference; effectiveness and efficiency; convenience; emotional gratification; information and knowledge; social benefits and assimilation.

A non-probability sample of a specific sample group (Digital Natives) is used in this study and despite the reassurance provided by quality criteria and triangulation, generalisation from this study is problematic. Future research to validate the eight exposed dimensions would be valuable.

For marketing communications and media channel planners, endeavouring to optimise clients’ budgets, the unique knowledge provided by the depth of understanding offered by the eight dimensions of polychronicity and their associated facets enables the development of relevant communication campaigns.

This paper presents a unique insight into individuals’ preference for multiple media use, uncovering the underlying dimensions of this behavioural phenomenon. Accordingly, this study makes a valuable contribution to knowledge in this emerging research domain.